Unfortunately, this story is not odor-free...

I’m on a bus and it’s worse than hell.

Not that I have anything against public transportation. No. I’m a big fan, actually. More people should take the bus to wherever they’re going instead of buying five cars for every possible occasion. Really, the city should do something about all the nervous drivers killing jaywalkers and polluting the air and burning what little we have left of fossil fuels. Maybe a Got bus? ad campaign would do the trick

But this one bus ride I’m taking, it’s just awful.

The bus is almost empty. There’s only three people standing, including me, and maybe half the seats are taken. I don’t know about the other two guys, but the reason I don’t sit down is this bus disgusts me.

I guess I’m just that lucky guy who always gets a hobo sitting within smelling distance. Or a guy who ate the most garlic ever. Or a guy who sweats like a pig.

Or an old man who smells like week-old urine.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything as mind-numbingly sickening as this guy.

He smells of old age.

He smells of ear infection.

He smells of dandruff.

He smells like a dead dog rotting in a sewer in Mexico.

He’s got this disgusting growth on his ear; it even makes me sick just writing about it.

You got to wonder what this guy’s mental condition is. Either he has the biggest tumor on the dignity center of his brain, or it’s just Alzheimer’s of unprecedented proportions. What else could turn a man into a reeking bag of hygiene’s worst nightmares?

He’s the reason soap wakes up all sweaty and shaking.

He’s why Freddy Krueger visits shampoo every night.

Oh, and did I mention he stinks?

All I can do is look around at all the calm faces of people sitting around this abomination of fresh air and wonder, how come no one else is holding back vomit except me? I have to open the window and stick my head out into the cold wind just so I don’t pass out. And the little oxygen I manage to get into my brain I burn on wondering about these people just simply ignoring the stench.

Then the seat farthest away from this guy becomes vacant. The bus stops and two people get off. But they’re not holding their noses and they’re not throwing up on the sidewalk. They just get off and walk away. One of them the person formerly sitting on the seat the farthest away from what I can only call that guy.

But I don’t sit down. Because that’s another thing I hate besides old people already decaying before they even die. Warm seats. The second worst thing on a bus.

Don’t you just hate it when you sit down and you can still feel the body heat left over by the previous person? Not that it’s really body heat. It’s all their farts and pissed pants and hairy asses and bloody hemorrhoids imprinted on the fake leather seat forever. And when I accidentally sit down on a warmed-up seat, this image of a thousand gigantic asses of fat old women just storms through my head and catapults me back on my feet.

So I remain standing next to the open window and not far enough from that guy.

And the bus just goes on and on forever before it stops on the next stop, which is when I consider getting off prematurely. Alas, before I make up my mind the door closes and I’m stuck with old stinky boy and the people who ignore him.

I wonder what would happen if I told the man to get off. If I told him he smells worse than a record-breaking pile of manure. Would anyone even agree with me or am I the only sane person on this six-wheel gas chamber bus?

Of course, I say nothing, because by now I must be green as a carton character eating Castor oil and I’d probably throw up if I tried to speak.

By the time I manage to get enough fresh air through the window so I don’t have to worry about collapsing on the floor from a stench-induced fatal seizure, I’m halfway home. I tell my self, it’s only going to be five more minutes. But who am I kidding, it’s at least seven.

As I get more oxygen, I start to remember some other encounters with filthy people on buses and trams and in the streets.

A guy sleeping on a bench, in desperate need of a diaper.

A woman with hairy ears and what looked like drool on her coat’s lapel.

Two constructions workers who probably hit a septic tank pipe while digging the foundations of some rich guy’s new house that will now stand on a pond of someone else’s spilled shit.

And of course gypsies, but let’s not even get into that.

Now I’m thinking about the kid I was a hundred percent sure pooped his pants when suddenly the guy stands up. Out of the blue, the old crap-sack is getting off the bus. I should be jumping with joy, but instead I’m just disgusted even more. His blue slacks are all worn out and yellowish on his ass and I know it’s not just because he sits around in the sand too much. I know what that yellowish stain is, and it’s definitely not dirt.

I turn around and miss out on him stumbling out onto the sidewalk and slowly and disgustingly walking away, and it’s all I can do not to barf out my intestines. But I’m free. It’s just a couple more minutes in the bus and the air is getting better with each blow of the wind coming in through my life-saving open window.

Next stop, a man gets on and sits where the old guy sat before. And he just has to smell the piss and feel the farts, but he doesn’t get up. It sickens me even more and I have to close my eyes, imagine something nice.

These ignorant drones on the bus are even worse than the old guy. They pretend they don’t smell all the bodily fluids he soaked himself in. They pretend they don’t see that awful thing on his ear I am once again not even going to describe because I’m turning green already.

These people, they pretend everything is OK, but maybe if they did something, the guy would go away. Maybe if people weren’t so ignorant, old body bags like this guy wouldn’t even exist.

I don’t know

All I care about is I’m getting off.

My stop is being stopped at.

I take a last look around at the gassed people and I step into the cool breeze of fresh January air and it’s a symphony to the senses.

My nose is dancing to the Blue Danube.

It’s ballet in my lungs.

I feel so clean and fresh this must be a deodorant ad.

It would be a happy ending to this gut-wrenching stench fest if it weren’t for that dog shit I almost step in. What a day this is. Really. I am so throwing up when I get home. And if after reading this you’re not doing the same thing, then you people are just as weird and insane as those reek-tolerant jerks on the bus.

The Saturday Morning Constant

I would see her every Saturday. The Phantom of the Supermarket, pushing her shopping cart and shopping. Me, doing the same thing. Buying small potatoes, apples and oranges, bread and butter, pieces of cake, and, well, you get the picture.

We would often meet in the aisles of yoghurts and meat; I’d see her buying shampoo while I was looking for shaving cream. Like some kind of Saturday morning constant, she was always there, every week. Sometimes I bumped into her every five minutes, sometimes there was no sign of her until I caught a glimpse of the black hair and gray-black checkered coat she always wore, across half the big store, for only a second or two.

Without her, shopping for groceries would just not be it anymore. Not because she was physically attractive. She was actually around forty, maybe even forty five, or in other words, almost twice my age. No, it wasn’t any primordial testosterone-driven urge that made me want to see her. It was the feeling I had when I saw her that everything is as it should be. The Sun still shines, the paper gets printed every day, and she shops when I do. A balance, you might say. But that’s not everything. I wanted to see her every week because she was mysterious. Her appearance, her self-conscious moves, it was all something that allowed me to imagine. To dream and to wonder. To ask questions.

Who was she?

Maybe a single mother who goes shopping early in the morning not because the store is still quite empty, but because her daughter is still asleep at the time. Could be the daughter is either sick or still very young, demanding constant care, so her mother can only leave the house when she’s resting. It would also explain why my mystery woman always looked so tired. She had these sacks under her eyes, and wrinkles. All of it unsuccessfully hidden under make-up.

Why was she always dressed so fashionably?

It was either black trousers that emphasized her still very presentable ass, or it was an elegant knee-long black skirt that showed off her thin legs and medium high-heel shoes. Almost always the same black blouse with enough buttons undone to expose a bit more than just her cleavage, if you looked from the right angle. And the coat, either on, or folded in the shopping cart. I always wondered what was up with the cocktail party clothes she used to wear. I like to think she had a busy social life, went to clubs and discos, but no matter how hard I tried not to think of her as a hooker; it inevitably crept into my mind. It made more sense and tied in with the daughter theory better. If she had a sick child, she did not wear those clothes to parties, but to work. And once again, it explained her tired eyes.

How did she get here? (And also, where did she live?)

I had never seen her in the parking lot. Not once. Come to think of it, I only saw her leaving twice, but, of course, by the time I paid and got out, she was gone. This was actually one of the things I liked speculating about the most. When I parked my car and when I was leaving, I always guessed which one was hers. Was it the VW Golf? Or was she rich? Maybe one of the Mercedes A-Classes scattered across the lot, a car ideal for a woman (and mother). Then again, a very realistic possibility was that she lived within walking distance from the supermarket. That was what I found the most romantic (for lack of a better word). The thought that she was always around, and whenever I needed to know everything is as usual, I could just go buy something and imagine she was somewhere near.

Did she recognize me the way I recognized her?

We passed around each other between stacks of milk cartons. We waited in the same line for the butcher. But very seldom did she look at me, and even then I saw no trace of recognition in her face. Really, if I could ask her just one thing, I’d want to know if she remembers me. If I mean to her what she means to me. Do I give her that sense of stability and continuity I get when seeing her? But I can’t ask her anything. Not anymore. Not since I had to start talking about her in the past tense.

It’s still hard for me. Not knowing where she is, what has become of her. One Saturday, she just wasn’t there. I thought, oh well, maybe her alarm clock didn’t work or something. But next week, she wasn’t there, either. And the following week. And then the last Saturday of the month. She was nowhere to be seen. Shopping lost its sense. I no longer felt my day was complete without seeing her. I actually thought about asking around, maybe someone else would recognize the description and at least wonder as I did, if not give an answer. But in the end, I didn’t ask anybody, only myself.

Did her daughter die?

Tragic as it sounds, it’s still no reason why she would stop shopping groceries for so long. I mean, everybody has to eat, even a mourning mother. Unless she left town to live with her own mother, or the mother came to live with her and take care of her. Or there never was any daughter and my elusive Saturday constant just left town. Maybe a vacation. Or she moved because she got a better job.

Or did she die?

Anything can happen to anyone. A car could’ve run over her, or maybe she fell in the bathtub and broke her neck. Or maybe her pimp killed her, or one of her customers. No, for the last time, she was not a hooker.

So really, who was she?

A woman who, like me, lived alone, and, like me, shopped on Saturday mornings. An ordinary person, with a middle-class job, a flat big enough to entertain up to five guests each Friday, maybe her friends, or colleagues, which would explain why she had day-old make up on her face, and her clothes, the same she had on yesterday, worn for the last time before she puts them into the wash machine when she returns home from the supermarket.

No. I’ll tell you who she really was. A perfect stranger, whom I turned into something else, imagined things about her that were not true. She was your ordinary forty-something woman that I automatically assumed was a prostitute just because she wanted to look pretty. From the day I first saw her, I stared at her, “accidentally” bumped into her just to have another look at her. I treated her like an animal in the zoo. I turned her into a phantom, and she probably knew it, felt my eyes on her back, so she found another supermarket. Maybe because she was afraid I’m some sort of stalker, maybe because she though by staring at her, I was mocking her.

I apologize to you, mysterious lady, wherever you are. I meant no harm, and I miss you. You made my day complete. Now, I’m alone in a big store and I feel lost.

Firecrackin'

So here I am. Cold. Drunk. About to lose my fingers.

It’s New Year’s God Dammed Eve. It’s the last day of this lousy thing we call 2007. And I’m probably the only person who doesn’t give a crap. This whole fireworks business, the celebrating, the food and booze, I hate it all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy getting drunk, it’s just that I don’t think the coming of the new year is a good reason to do so.

All this day is about is you have to buy a new calendar.

You have to get used to writing a different number in the date.

Because that’s all 2008 is. A number. Really, the actual year is not 2008 AD, because they didn’t start counting the years right after Jesus was born. So forget about 2008. Forget about New Year’s Eve.

Forget about fireworks. That’s what I should’ve done.

Last year, it was better. Less fun, but definitely safer. I stayed at home, celebrated with my parents. We watched TV and we ate junk food and we drank some champagne at midnight and that was it. The TV programs were horrid, my mother moody as always, and I was stuffed with chips and sandwiches two hours into the seemingly endless evening. But it was at least safe. Safer than this frat party I’m at right now.

At home, there was no sin.

No brain damage from too much alcohol (and pot).

No vomiting.

No one got raped.

No one got their fingers torn away by firecrackers.

But it was no fun.

What they do on TV over here in this fucked-up country is they do these big shows. These events. These celebrations. Filmed in front of a live audience two or three months before December 31^st. They are full of celebrities, most of them twice as old as their plastic surgeons make them look like. Some of them dead before it even gets aired.

These celebrities, they perform their ten-year-old sketches. Tell their 20-year-old jokes. They sing 40-year-old songs on playback, not even trying to fake it. Really, I’ve seen better lip sync on Japanese cartoons. And all this is so unappealing to my generation, because the general assumption is that I should be drunk at some party and not at home watching this with my folks. My demographic, we really don’t even have a choice. It’s either get shit-faced or be bored to death.

And somewhere in the middle of this big show, we start to quarrel. Then we start to argue. Then we fight. We fight because I want to watch something else but dad has the remote. We fight because dad wants to go out to smoke but mom wants him to quit the habit. We fight because mom bitches about everything.

All I’m thinking is, I could’ve been so wasted by now.

Not last year. But this year, definitely.

This year, I went to a friend’s place with a bunch of other guys from school. We started drinking at six and stopped at two in the morning. Last man standing. And that’s when my tragedy comes in. That’s when we decide to get out of the house and light some fireworks.

That’s when I take the firecracker. That’s when I remember how safe it was last year.

When midnight approaches, the text messages start pouring in. Every stupid friend and relative, they feel the need to wish you a happy new one. They write these stupid poems and rhymes that don’t even make sense and they send them expecting to get an equally funny reply. Some smartass thank-you message. A clever pun. A good joke. Well they can all bite me. I never reply to these well-wishers. I usually turn my cell phone off, and erase all that shit in the morning.

Then the hour strikes. We drink a glass of champagne and we get some well-wishing phone calls from even more friends and relatives and then we go to bed.

That’s how you celebrate at home.

The way you do it is you don’t enjoy it at all. It’s an ordeal.

At the party, this year, we did free style. Whoever was sober enough to get the champagne bottle opened poured some to everyone who could find a glass and that was about it. We were about fifteen second off with the countdown. 2008 started late.

But back to how we got the great idea with the fireworks.

So I have the firecracker in my hand and I’m lighting it. The red tip of the green roll of paper filled with powder catches fire. It sparks more than it burns. It’s what’s called a fuse, I think. It’s supposed to hiss or burn or whatever for about five second before it explodes. Five seconds. One for each finger I’m going to lose.

Last year, at home, I went to bed at about a half hour into the new year. But I didn’t fall asleep until at least two a.m. There was just too much noise outside. Red and green and blue explosions of cheap Chinese pyrotechnics kept me awake. All I could think about was, why is this such a big deal? What difference does it really make to change the date? It’s not like everyone starts over with a clean slate. All the problems we had in December are right there in January smiling at us and waiting to destroy us.

This year, I won’t go to sleep.

This year, I’ll be in pain.

In about three seconds. The fuse is burning and hissing and sparking, and it’s doing those things real fast. And all I can do is I stare at it. I don’t know why I don’t let go. Why I don’t throw it away like the instructions say I should. I guess I’m too drunk not to be hypnotized by the red glow of the burning tip of the firecracker.

This year, I forgot to turn my cell phone off. This year, all the messages came in on time. But this year, I was too much under the influence to care. Sure enough, the usual collection of happy new years was piling up right on schedule. First a message from mom wondering if I’m alright. Then a message from a friend I hate. One from a guy I haven’t seen in years. Some from people I don’t like but don’t show it. Another one from mom. Then some more from people I consider annoying.

And the funny thing about these poems and rhymes is, there’s only about six or seven of them, and each year I get them all, but each year a different person sends a different one.

The way that happens is they all think they are so clever.

Last year, someone got a message. He liked it, so this year, he decides to send it himself. Only the thing is, the person who sent that last year’s favorite, he liked the thing he got that year, so now that’s the one he’s sending this year. Get it? You get the same shit every year, from the same people, but they all think they are sending you something you haven’t already read five times.

But text messages are the last thing on my mind right now.

I got about a second and a half before the firecracker explodes. Instead of throwing it away, I think of all the great memories I have with those fingers. Like when you see your whole life before you die. Only it’s just the life of your falanges.

Like when I totally gave my math teacher the finger.

Or when I scratched an itch until I ripped my skin and started bleeding.

And of course, there was that time I held an explosive and risked losing them.

Oh, wait. That’s actually happening right now. But lucky for me, the firecracker was cheap and probably not stored properly, so instead of exploding and tearing half my hand off, it only burned out. Quietly, harmlessly. Instead of pain, there is relief.

Instead of blood, there’s just more alcohol.

Instead of 2007, there is 2008.

Instead of calling an ambulance, I read another happy new year greeting shining there on my cell phone’s LCD.

So what's this all about?

It's about human nature.
It's about all the things in life that suck.
It's definitely not about me trying to express myself.

It's called Stone Cold Stories because I like the song Stone Cold by Rainbow. And because I'm cold and arrogant and I hate tear jerkers. The short short stories that will appear here are going to be just that. Cold and arrogant. They are going to represent what I think. What I like and dislike. You might call them rants.

Updates will not be regular, but there will be at least one new post each month. That is the minimum. But there's probably going to be more than that, so don't worry.

Not that you care that much.

So anyway, enjoy and post comments. Destroy me. I like criticism.